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> Retailers buy and sort through 55kg (121lb) bales of clothing – most of it is either “deadstock” (clothes kept in warehouses and storerooms for years but neve
by randunel 3y ago
> Retailers buy and sort through 55kg (121lb) bales of clothing – most of it is either “deadstock” (clothes kept in warehouses and storerooms for years but never worn) or items donated to charities or left in recycling bins. About 6m of the better-quality items are sold or upcycled in the market every week.
They're not only purchasing, but they've built an entire local industry around it. "Dumping" and "killing of an extremely precious local industry" are not in this article, on the contrary.
- hef19898 3y agoThe industry they have is making a few, select people rich. The industry they don't have, small taylor shops, would help everyone and support a much more stable local industry.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoSmall tailor shops can't compete with industrialized cloth production anyways, as the luddites protested against and lost. As long as they can produce something else that can be traded, it isn't weird that clothes can just be imported. It isn't great for self sufficiency, but the reality is clothes are produced only in a few countries these days anyways.
- Spivak 3y agoIt's not like tailors have their own looms, they're buying fabric same as everyone else. The value-add is that a tailor can do alterations or made-to-order clothes. Even "industrialized" clothing relies on humans to do most of the joining work so the pricing advantage isn't as big if we actually cracked down on labor exploitation. We won't but a girl can dream, right?
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoThat kind of cloth manufacturing isn't really scalable. So clothes would be a lot more expensive, even by western standards, and even considering how labor would be much cheaper in those countries.